Just me, DavoGrande, 6'4' and 285 pounds of love, compassion, honor, decency and humility (stop laughing!), bound together by a framework of principle, mainly the Commandments... so far the scientist/leftists have failed to convince me that there is no God and that He didn't create me... :-)

Friday, June 20, 2008

Me, I'm suspicious. I have just one question, unanswered by this article--

What is the daily range of temperatures where the lander is?

The so-called ice was only an inch or so beneath the surface dust. If it was ice, then the area must be below 32* F and VERY dry and hot in the daytime, especially if the consensus is the ice vaporized directly instead of going liquid first.

So is this an area that goes from frozen to smoking every day? But if it's smoking hot and dry during the daytime, why is the ice still partially there in the second photo? Ice doesn't vaporize SLOWLY, does it? If the transition is slow, wouldn't there be liquid?

For me, that stuff could have been dust that blew away. Without actual video to show the process and the time involved, it's speculation.

Scientists are determined to find ice on Mars, because they're determined to find LIFE on Mars, past or present.

Life on another planet would go a long way to proving the Darwinian theory that all begins randomly, and would go an equally long way to proving Bible believers are idiots.

Since I expect to hear from their lawyers if I do, I have decided not to do it.

I won't be cutting and pasting anything from this story. The Associated Press has served notice that it will harass bloggers until they stop, citing 'fair use' and pretending the bloggers are somehow stealing their 'product' to make money.

Most bloggers don't make any money, and the ones who do are not the ones who are using AP material. They are writing their own, very well, and that is WHY they are making money.

The AP, though, is desperate to 'protect its content' from the 21st century. So no cut-n-pastes.

I can link to Yahoo News, though, and so here it is. It's a story about Scott McClellan's appearance on Capitol Hill today to hawk his book some more - er, to testify before the house judiciary committee and tell them everything he doesn't actually know about the White House's activities.

His most shocking charge? The White House was 'secretive'.

He's just whining that he didn't get on the A list most of the time.

The AP's contribution to the sleaze, though, is their deliberate misrepresentation of the Libby case. McClellan complains that the White House told him to say to the public that Scooter Libby was not involved in the Plame affair. The story then points out the both Rove and Libby had in fact discussed Plame with reporters.

But we know, and the story even MENTIONS a few lines later, that it was Richard Armitage who 'leaked' the fact that Plame was in the CIA, and those reporters were actually asking Rove and Libby if THEY had heard that she was in the CIA.

They already knew, courtesy of Armitage, who kept this fact to himself for too long but did reveal it to Fitzgerald THREE WEEKS into the two year long investigation.

So Fitzgerald claimed to be asking a question for which he already HAD, and KNEW he had, the answer. But he kept on, spending tax dollars like water, determined to catch out SOMEBODY in the White House.

And eventually, Libby was caught telling two different stories about the same event, unfortunately contradicting some sworn testimony and thus falling afoul of his own oath to tell the truth.

Libby was NOT convicted for leaking Plame's name. Armitage did that. Fitzgerald did not assert that ANYONE from the White House leaked Plame's name.

This story says Plame 'claims' the White House 'quietly' revealed her name in order to get back at her husband for his perfidy. It also says McClellan agrees.

But the fact is that ARMITAGE leaked her name, and after he did it, it was LEAKED. You can't have multiple leaks of the same information in different weeks. In the first case it is a secret, and in the second it's PUBLICLY KNOWN. The reporters were trying to get White House people to say it, but they already KNEW.

This story very carefully and deliberately shades the truth in order to continue the myth that the White House 'got revenge' on the Plame/Wilson dynamic duo. This is simply NOT SO.

The other inconvenient facts are forgotten as well, such as the fact that she had been deskbound in Washington for six years and no longer qualified as a secret agent under the law that forbids mentioning their names. Her 'operative' career was long over, and she was outside the window of protection. Fitzgerald overlooked this, as does AP here.

Bottom line is, McClellan is still trying to sell his book. Nobody who didn't believe this carp before is going to suddenly be convinced by McClellan's whiny grievances. He puts on display the truth, that he didn't know much and wasn't invited to as many meetings as he thinks he should have been.

Not to mention Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the "tough grandma" of Texas politics who failed to unseat Rick Perry as governor and probably begrudged this failure to lack of support from Bush, is the proud mother of little Scottie. Blood is thicker than decency, especially in Washington.

All told, sickening behavior from Scott and invidious twisting of history by AP combine to induce nausea on a number of levels. Ick.

From the Ft. Wayne Gazette comes this story about the various propositions of the two presidential candidates. At the end, it brings up a few things about Barack Hussein Obama. Excerpts in blue, my comments in black--

"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn’t allow the terrorist mastermind to become a martyr, but he may be killed if the U.S. government finds him.

Bring him to justice in a way that doesn't allow him to become a martyr. Capture him alive, in other words. Exactly how he plans to do this he doesn't say, and no intrepid reporters managed to ask. Then he waffles, saying bin Laden might get killed in the process of being taken alive.

...he said the Nuremberg trials for the prosecution of Nazi leaders are an inspiration because the victors acted to advance universal principles and set a tone for the creation of an international order.

Obama still hasn't figured out that the Nuremberg Trials were a MILITARY TRIBUNAL in which the guilty parties had NO habeus corpus rights, just like the battlefield-captured terrorists at Guantanamo (until last week). He has been quoted last week as saying the Supreme Court justices were right to give these terrorists the rights of U.S. citizens on U. S. soil, but praises a proceeding which did no such thing for Nazi prisoners.

Interestingly, he thinks of the Nuremberg Trials as having an entirely new 'tone', but they actually were conducted based on established international law and trial procedures. The only thing 'new' is that they happened, which was a consequence of the ending of that war and the defeat of the Nazis. The path and purpose of the proceedings had been established for some time. The League of Nations and the Geneva Conventions and so forth had been in place for years.

Obama was questioned about bin Laden after he met with a new team of national security advisers.

The old team having met with some public relations difficulties.

The meeting came after rival presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign said Obama had a pre-9/11 mind-set for promoting criminal trials for terrorists."

Actually, if he's that much of a fan of the Nuremberg Trials, let's just propose to him that we conduct all our affairs with captured prisoners exactly the same way. Military tribunal, no rights granted the prisoners except the right to speak in their own defense.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

So far this week, I've heard over a half dozen prominent democrats say this, verbatim. They throw in a couple of figures, also pretty much verbatim from the DNC fax of talking points.

Their figures?

We use 25% of the world's oil production while our national reserves are only 2% of the world's reserves. Ergo, summa, non bona, yada yada.

This is apples to oranges. RESERVES and PRODUCTION are two different things. Provable reserves are VASTLY larger than annual production. 2% of provable reserves is an ENORMOUS amount of oil.

The dems are attempting to hoodwink America into believing that tapping these reserves would have a minimal effect on price, but their numbers are deeply deceitful. And they're swimming against a tide of voter anger, where this week even LIBERALS are polled as supporting new drilling 46% vs. 35% against. The nation overall is more than 60% in favor of new drilling.

I always wondered what the price of change was, and apparently it's $4 a gallon.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Looks like Algore hasn't finished all his 'green power' modifications at the palatial Gore mansion in Tennessee... his electric bill is higher than ever.

Al Gore uses more energy in the form of electricity in a month than the average American uses in a year. And that's just at HOME, never mind all the jetsetting around in his Gulfstream private planes and all the fancy hotels at faraway leftist thinktank (drunktank) meetings.

His 'people' claim he's buying electricity from alternative sources like windmills and so forth, so he has a smaller 'footprint' (but still a huge buttprint), but I'd like to see how his house is wired... is it a separate grid that delivers these alternative types of electricity? No, it's just an accounting trick, like when he 'donates' his profits from his movie to 'charity' and it turns out to be an ecological charity owned BY HIM, which pays him a hefty salary.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Some have said that because Obama was a muslim only as a child, well then 'apostate' does not apply, as Islam withholds the penalty of death if the change is made in childhood.

As Melanie points out, Obama was raised and schooled as a Muslim for at least part of his childhood, but did not 'become a Christian' (in quotes because in my view he did not and is not) until he was almost 30.

This means the death penalty for apostasy is very much in play.

Is it going to be the KKKlan? Some redneck? A bitter, Bible-clinging, unemployed, gun-toting Pennsylvanian shooting him at a gas station, as his wife has suggested?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

But do not believe for a MOMENT that anything is actually different. It's all nomenclature and verbal gymnastics, as when Obama claimed 'he doesn't work for me, I"m not paying him'. That's true, but irrelevant. The point was, and is, Obama's circle is just jam packed with radicals, corrupt machine types and criminals. And James Johnson is as corrupt as they come. His advice will receive as much consideration as Obama had planned to give it, only now it will not be publicly acknowledged.

/end update

********

Still waiting for ANY associates of Barack Obama to be ordinary, normal Americans with no radical, corrupt or criminal history.

Still waiting.

Lately he's chosen Eric Holder, former Justice guy under Clinton, to help him find a veep. Holder steered lawyers the right way a few years back and secured a pardon for billionaire Marc Rich, a tax fugitive living it up in Europe but wanted here in America by the IRS, and certain to go to prison if he came back. Holder has admitted, apparently, that his purpose in doing this was to earn favors with certain people so that he stood a better chance of becoming Attorney General in the future.

Another superb choice of search committee membership is James Johnson, who will become famous for having friends in high places at Countrywide lending company. Countrywide has come under incredible scrutiny during the 'housing crisis' for steering lower class applicants to higher interest rate mortgages, and there is something to those charges. But Johnson accepted a loan from Countrywide for almost a million dollars, at an interest rate lower than 4% when the going rate was 6%.

This is a gift, tens of thousands of dollars of free money in each year of the mortgage. It makes him beholden to Countrywide's executives, and perhaps to the IRS as well. Obama has simultaneously attacked Countrywide for its contribution to the housing 'crisis' and welcomed aboard one of it's multimillionaire 'friends with benefits' to the search committee for veep!

It's so bad, even the WaPo has offered up an article about Obama's insider problem. The article, though, fails to mention that Johnson is a partner of Soros. This could be the single biggest problem Obama has, as many Americans will not forget "Betray Us".

Johnson and Holder join Wright and Rezko and who knows how many, when its all over, with more than questionable backgrounds who are now part of the 'Obama legend'.

Does he have ANY associates and friends who are NOT corrupt, radical or criminal?

this is kind of a sick joke to play on a bunch of 18 year olds, don't you think? They're going out there, young, naive, worried about their own performance, thinking about the future, trying to become adults, and here comes a (presumably) respected member of the media laying this ENORMOUS burden on their shoulders, "you've got to fix this broken country".

He's apologized for it, but given the full text of the speech, I don't buy it. He's all the way there, convinced times are terrible and we've gone down the wrong road, his generation has run the ship aground, this election is a once in a lifetime crossroads, etc.

Lord, please grant me this one prayer before I die, that everyone who really doesn't like this nation will just pack their bags and GET OUT.

Exciting, that is, unless you hate Christians and are actively promoting that JudeoChristian history is mythical.... which makes the location of this discovery and its proponents all the more remarkable.

It's in Jordan. The disciples themselves may well have worshiped here.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Senator Rockefeller released a committee report yesterday and said of it, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent."

As the linked story shows, there is almost nothing in the actual report that is not 'substantiated by available intelligence', in the report's own words. And the President is, by definition, using intelligence as his basis for making any assertions whatsoever about a situation like this. It is the job of intelligence to inform him so that he may decide. He was not deceptively 'presenting intelligence as fact', only speaking about what he had been informed about, in appropriate terms.

The thing that convinced the entire world that Saddam HAD these weapons was HIS OWN BEHAVIOR, delaying and deceiving and ejecting inspectors, all as if he had something to HIDE.

So Rockefeller's report proves that Rockefeller's comments about his report are a load of manure.

The second reason it's stunning? It appeared in the Washington Post. Online, anyway. Not sure if it's in the actual paper. But the moon isn't blue and hell isn't frozen over (I'd have heard), so I would wager it is not, in fact, in print.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Someone finally asked him about this rumor that Michelle appears in a videotape badmouthing "whitey".

B.O.'s first comments, that rumors get spread much easier on the web these days than before the days of instant worldwide communication but that they should get no more credence than that, was reasonable.

Then someone asked "do you know this rumor is not true?"

He responded, "I've answered this question. Frankly, my hope is people don't play this game."

Then more about how rumors spread and how terrible it is and how we shouldn't do it.

Someone asked him if it's acceptable to ask the question, and he ventured that people should think about it before they ask about rumors.

Fine.

But this is not even CLOSE to a denial. He's insisted on a previous occasion that if anyone has evidence that he or Michelle have ever spoken this way, let's see the evidence.

Less like a denial than a bravado-masked inquiry, don't you think?

Seems to me like he wonders if there is such a tape and hopes there is not. In the meantime he's trying to convince the press and the public that it's somehow unsavory to talk about, or ask him about, such a tape.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

After the Tony Rezko convictions became public news, Barack Obama went back to the same well from which he dipped up the classic "He's not the Reverend Wright I knew" line.

Literally.

"This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew" was his response, as well as a lame suggestion that 'reforms' are needed, as if it was a policy or law problem that cause Rezko's misbehavior.

Rezko is a criminal. Many who play the crooked Chicago politics game are criminals. Barack Obama plays that game very well.

Headline on the Future News Network--

"Senator Barack Obama today confronted reports that he has contradicted himself on many top issues during the campaign by watching the videos of himself and saying, ' that's not the Barack Obama I knew. Reforms need to be undertaken to prevent this from happening again, and I'm the guy to undertake them'."

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

As liberals are wont to do, she flapped her gums about a political issue to make herself seem noble and good. She said the earthquakes in China were 'karmic payback' for the way the government has treated Tibet.

I am quite certain that whatever Karma is, if anything, it does not deliberately kill thousands of innocent schoolchildren 500 miles from the capital in order to teach members of government a lesson about ANYTHING.

One might as well suggest that the deaths in New Orleans were karmic payback for a rotten and corrupt liberal democrat government in New Orleans and in the Louisiana Statehouse for decades. Or that Ted Kennedy's brain tumor is karmic payback for a life of contemptible corruption and evil.

You see what I mean. One can take that karma thing wherever one wishes to go. It's stupid.

We all know hurricanes don't choose where they go. We all know that illness strikes good and bad people alike.

And we all know that the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren can't possibly be payback for anything, since they didn't DO anything.

Here's an AP story about a Massachusetts state senator who is, apparently, and allegedly, a serial groper and misbehaver. Just when he escaped trial for one incident of approaching and touching a woman due to insufficient evidence, he got arrested for doing the same thing again.

I'll just say that his political party affiliation is not mentioned until the very last line in the story.

Monday, June 2, 2008

... that when the United States swears in President Obama, Mahmoud Ahmedine-jihad will suddenly and totally change his mind about us being the Great Satan?

I've always said it isn't about what we do, it's about what we ARE.

Free, liberated, modern, culturally alive.

Irreligious.

Pornographic.

Sex-obsessed.

Drug-users.

If you work your way down the list of the things about America that make Muslims mad, you sort of get mad yourself. :-)

Still, these things are inevitable byproducts of hundreds of millions of people living in freedom and doing what they want. We have laws and rules, but for Ahmadine-Jihad there is only one rule-- Islam or die.

"These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock 'em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing. But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build."Barack Hussein Obama, 1995.

Notice he did not say "cursing white folks, or making anti-Semitic remarks, isn't fair or morally right."

Only that it isn't practical, that it won't get the job done.

Sure, you can curse whitey and those damn Jews, just make sure you also do some work.

So when Bob Barr first announced he was running for Prez as a libertarian, he was asked by Sean Hannity how he rationalized the fact that he would take mostly Republican votes and that he was likely to cause McCain to lose and a Marxist wacko named Obama to become President.

Barr's answer was utterly disappointing; he dodged the question by simply saying he was trying to offer Americans who are disenchanted with Washington a different choice and that he believed they would take it.

Barr knows, as does the vast majority of Americans, that he will likely be a Perot, taking votes from McCain and causing Obama to win. In fact, Barr has hired people who worked for Perot fifteen years ago.

He knows.

And this article makes it clear the Libertarian Party, though not enchanted with Barr, lusts to be the 'decider' of this presidential election.

These increased costs, threatening to starve the poor and destroy the incomes of many a lower middle class worker, are already unbearable and already receiving mass protest in many forms.

And this is very early in the game, folks. The UN has not yet inflicted itself on us in any meaningful way, Kyoto has been rejected, and the Democrat congress hasn't managed to get anything past Bush that really matters.

But imagine a strong Democrat congress with Barack Obama as president. Imagine a UN and a euroleftist cabal that have free access to American taxpayer funds and can set policy that President O will rubberstamp.

Imagine a totally plundered American economy, in which 'poor, minorities will be hardest hit', as the newspapers always say. But everyone will be hit.